Wednesday, December 23, 2015

Chipotle
Mexican Grill.. [has] grown into a chain of more than 1,900 locations, thanks in
part to marketing—including short animated films about the evils of industrial
agriculture—that reminds customers that its fresh ingredients and naturally
raised meat are better than rivals’ and better for the world. The implication:
If you eat Chipotle, you’re doing the right thing, and maybe you’re better,
too. It helped the company, charging about $7 for a burrito, reach a market
valuation of nearly $24 billion. Its executives seemed to have done the
impossible and made a national fast-food chain feel healthy.

The evils of industrial agriculture. Wholesome and health
organic food. Just what today's trendy millennials are craving: a good meal mixed with virtue. It was the place you could go after services at the Church of the Liberal Pieties.

What could go wrong? Bloomberg continues:

Fewer
people associate Chipotle with “healthy” now. Three months before Collins was
infected with E. coli, five people fell ill eating at a Seattle-area
restaurant. By the time local health officials had confirmed a link, the
outbreak was over, so no one said anything. In August, 234 customers and
employees contracted norovirus at a Chipotle in Simi Valley, Calif., where
another worker was infected. Salmonella-tainted tomatoes at 22 outlets in
Minnesota sickened 64 people in August and September; nine had to be
hospitalized. Norovirus struck again in late November: More than 140 Boston
College students picked up the highly contagious virus from a nearby Chipotle,
including half of the men’s basketball team. An additional 16 students and
three health-care staff picked it up from the victims. The source? A sick
worker who wasn’t sent home although Chipotle began offering paid sick leave in
June. In the second week of December, when Chipotle should have been on highest
alert, a Seattle restaurant had to be briefly shut down after a health
inspection found that cooked meat on the takeout line wasn’t being kept at a
high enough temperature. And in the most recent case, on Dec. 21, the CDC
announced it was investigating an outbreak of what seems to be a different and
rare version of E. coli 026 that’s sickened five people in two states who
ate at Chipotle in mid-November. The company says it had expected to see
additional cases. It still doesn’t know which ingredients made people
ill.